CH557

It was late by the time Ben was finished being healed, with both soul mages having used him as a chance to experiment to determine the best ways of healing a damaged soul, but once they were both done, Ben and Thera’s vacation options were finished for that point.

Rather than go out through another random gate again to see what they could find, they opted to enjoy a meal with their friends, explaining that they were supposed to be taking some time to relax, even if the first day had gone poorly, before they all parted again, with Ben and Thera going to Anailia’s embassy within the city to grab a room and promptly fell asleep after dealing with that unexpectedly long day.

Or at least Ben tried to sleep. The gods had asked him to do as much, to let his mind experience real rest along with what he was supposed to be giving his body, but such a thing came with unexpected consequences.

Ben’s mind was no longer that of a human’s, no matter what he might say against that. When he closed his eyes and drifted off for the few time since awakening his mind skills he didn’t have one singular dream, but instead a thousand as his subconscious gave him hell, showing him his hopes, sorrows, memories, and tortures all at once, with his thought speed skill making each of those dreams feel like an eternity by the time he opened his eyes again.

The dark window told him it was still late and how tired he felt was enough to know that he could have only slept for at most an hour, but that wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat again so soon after the first one, so he did what had become far more normal for him at that point. He closed his eyes and forced his mind into his god’s realm, finding it already occupied.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” His god chided as he focused on his work with Helori and Nare, all of them too invested in what they were doing to turn their attention to Ben.

“Tried and failed. Shockingly, it looks like if you can think a few thousand things at once, that also means you can dream a few thousand things at once. It’s not fun.”

“Did you gain any levels again from it then?” Helori asked, casting an eye his way.

“Not this time, but I’m not really in the mood for a second attempt.”

“You really should try to learn to sleep normally if you can Ben,” Myriad sighed. “It might be easy enough for you to escape up here, but that doesn’t exactly make it a good choice.”

“I’ll try each night when I’m on vacation, but when I inevitably fail, let me come hang out up here. At least that way my body will get some proper rest instead of waking up every couple hours.”

“Fine, but no working while you’re up here. We aren’t going to make you anything to read.”

“Fine, I’ll deal so just keep me company.”

“You know what’s kind of bullshit?” Ben asked, laying on the floor and largely being a distraction to the other three as they tried to work as the hours wore on. “Convergent evolution. I’ve seen plenty of body shapes that match what you’d find on Earth, from humans to crabs to wolves and rodents and birds and so much more. Sure, I’m seeing some animals here that don’t have an equivalent back on my homeworld and Earth had options this one doesn’t seem to, but there’s a lot of similarities in animal life.”

Helori sighed, accepting that she’d be the one to humour him this time. “Where’s this going Ben?”

“This is going to the fact that the same is barely true for plants! I mean, sure, we see trees and shrubs and grasses on both worlds, I won’t deny that, but those are all broad categories. When we look at fruits and vegetables though, there’s basically never a decent equivalent between the two worlds.”

“There’s going to be a lot of good reasons for that,” She told him. “Domestication being the biggest one. If you farm a crop and select for different traits, those are going to become more common and if you don’t start with the same crop and select for different things then you’re going to get different things, not to mention the presence of magic in this reality compared to your last. Plant mages can make some pretty big differences in things when it comes to farming. Honestly, even just life mages would lead to some radically different ways to how crops are grown compared to trying to do all of that without magic.”

“And I get all of that, there’s a bunch of great reasons why I can’t find any crops that really remind me of my old world, expecting that of this one obviously doesn’t make any sense.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is I really want a tomato.”

There were plenty of genuinely hard things he’d had to deal with when it came to adapting to the new world he found himself in but one that was more of a minor annoyance than anything else was satisfying his cravings. When it came to cooked meals, with his skills and a bit of cleverness he could replicate most things closely enough to be satisfied, but when it came to anything fresher he just had to deal with it.

Wanting to bite into a crisp apple or a juicy orange was nothing new, but in that moment he would have killed for a simple tomato. The sweet and sour acidic bite bursting through a soft red skin called to him. Even if he could remember in perfect clarity the taste of every one he’d ever eaten thanks to his mind skills, that wasn’t the same as eating one himself, leaving him to do nothing but imagine the thing he was missing, his mind trying to construct the platonic form of one to try and live through until he got the shock of one popping into the air above him, falling onto his face.

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“Oh, freaking sweet!” He cheered, not caring about the fact it had been dropped on his head like that as he looked it over. What he’d been given was a beautiful red-orange roma, exactly as he’d been envisioning and without a second thought took a bite, feeling the flavours explode across his mouth as he swallowed. “Man, if you guys could do that, you should have told me sooner and… what?”

When he’d finished the tomato and looked at the gods with him, he found them all looking back, staring in some mixture of shock and horror.

“Ben,” Myriad began, taking the lead on the conversation as the god stared into his apostle. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”